03 - Atlas Ward [Mouse]

[Azélor]

These letter details make the city feel alive, almost

[Mouse]

This is gorgeous Mouse
You are going at a splendid rate.
I need to get busy.
Will you tackle a second area, after this one?

Aw thanks John

I put the speed down to the fact that that its relatively easy to do a city setting with City Designer 3 - It's almost an unfair advantage! I don't have to draw all the houses from scratch... well, usually I don't, but even though I drew all the bits of my new building set myself, I'd already been working on them for about a month before Guild City came into being. The thing that takes longest for me is getting the landscape right. In this case I started with no idea how to get there, but when I saw how other people were doing it - all the contour lines and shading (thank you for the advice snodsy!), and then all those lovely reference shots were uploaded, I managed to finally work out a style for it. I've only got this far with relatively little pain because of the work that everyone else has been putting into it all around me

I'd love to do another district, but I suspect that if I do it will probably look a bit too similar to this one, now that I've worked out the landscape, so I'll have a think about how I might vary my style to make it look different enough to fit with the patchwork nature of the city, while giving others a chance to take their first pick, or decide they would like to take part in a second round alongside me. Looking at all the maps in the WIP album I don't think I will be waiting for more than a few days - and I still have two more sections of this one to finish before I will be ready for a new project Perhaps I might even try doing one in GIMP, or a mixture of GIMP and CD3? That would be quite an adventure, since I really don't know what I'm doing in GIMP just yet, so the attempt alone could be quite entertaining! LOL!

wow Mouse, this is the first time I'm seeing this on a big screen, and I'm blown away. I usually do everything on my surface tablet, which is pretty small but I've had to resort to going down to the man cave today, and usually I bock at my other half for needing to have two great big monitors at his computer, but this is really nice. Being able to see all the tiny details you've put into this is really great. I love that you even put little animals around it's so cute, great job so far... I may have to get him to move this computer upstairs so I can see all these details every time I come to the Cartographers Guild, I'm starting to think I've been missing out.

LOL! And there I was feeling slightly ashamed of the lack of polish in my own map compared to your lovely (and lovingly) hand crafted buildings! Thank you!

And don't worry - I only have a 15 1/2 inch laptop to may name, so maybe I've been missing out as well with everyone else's maps!

These letter details make the city feel alive, almost

Thanks Azelor

You can blame Red for the carts and horses and things. Once he started with them, there was no way I was going to miss out using them myself. I also get a lot of energy by jamming on a massive set of Wi-Fi earphones and listening to music as I work - a lot of Hans Zimmer (music for Black Hawk Down, the Lion King, the Rain Man...) and John Williams (ET, Star Wars, Jaws, Superman... loads more) in this case. I must look a ridiculous sight with all my long frizzly hair stuck out in a bush around these gigantic gamer earphones I'm wearing, but I don't care!

EDIT: That's a really long music vid I linked to btw - so not essential listening! It's just the music I've been listening to for the 'fantasy mood'

[Straf]

That Orson sure gets around. I guess he's been dropping off some gin at the Compass Rose.

[Mouse]

Well his cart is certainly here, but I think that's the hotel stables Good point, really - I need to make the Compass Rose more 'cart friendly'. I don't think there's an easy way to get to it at the moment, unless you count the boundary road, but I have no idea how wide or narrow that will end up being when whoever maps district 4 gets done with it.

[Straf]

Orson will find a way to deliver the goods

[Mouse]

Well he might have to fly!

[Mouse]

The tiny houses of the poor sector in the west of the ward may be too tiny. I'm not sure.

I've used the automatic house tool, which allows me to draw houses in a fashion similar to the way that PS users might draw them, but which automatically calculates the roof angle and shade, given the pitch of the roof. They aren't as tidy as the symbol houses, but then - we are talking about the slums of Atlas Ward - the 'Graticules'.

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[Tonnichiwa]

I think those houses are just fine. They look great where you have put them and they look to be about the right size for what you are using them for. Great looking as always Mouse

[Mouse]

Thanks Tonnichiwa

I realised this morning when I looked at them again that a couple of them are fractionally smaller than the horse and cart I have at the other end of the map, but since these are hovels and attached to other slightly larger buildings I think they are maybe extensions to those larger buildings, built to house growing families - by the family.

The area has very thin soil due to the fact that its on the upper edge of a slight step up in the land (as you can see from the thinner grass), so nobody with any money to build a proper house wanted it. Its basically a very small shanty town area.

Hope my neighbours don't mind!

EDIT: and whoever gets area 15 to the west of mine can easily decide to 'redevelop' the slum area I've started at the boundary there - an opportunity for a very mixed area indeed - remnant pockets of slum with islands of newer, larger, straighter buildings, or should that be pockets of slum in an altogether newer more impressively built area...

[Mouse]

Ok - I think I may just have broken the unspoken rules by drawing a rather large rock in my area, when there are no hills marked out for me on John's master plan.

Now that I've learned how to do it so that I can re-draw it in another map I don't mind removing it and replacing it with a more conventional building. (Put simply I was just messing around and got carried away!)

I'll leave it to the popular vote to decide...

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